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News moving a headline at a time today is like an army of angry marchers intent upon tramping the most friendly society and culture to humanity ever to exist into oblivion. Beats anything I ever saw, to put it the way my old Daddy used to say.

I’ve chosen a few news items in my attempt to make the point. We are in the strangest of times, if we apply rationale to existential lunacy assaulting us not just daily, but hourly.

The first might seem innocuous enough. But it is a sort of pet peeve with me and I can’t help but comment to waiters and waitresses every time they bring a Coke or glass of water to the table. I tell them, if you were in California you would be fined a thousand dollars…and possibly put in jail for a month or two.

They, of course, think they have a crazy old guy on their hands. But, they politely and patiently smile and ask with incredulity in their voices–as if they were genuinely interested in my nonsense. “Why?”

Then I explain that such is the penalty in California for those serving customers plastic straws with drinks, etc. Well, the Governor Moonbeam-type infection has spread and now includes our nation’s capital as part of the serve-straws-at-your-own-peril insanity.

Here’s a brief excerpt of the story”

Washington, D.C., will begin enforcing its ban on plastic straws on Jan. 1, which would penalize churches for offering free coffee if it comes with a stirrer.

The Department of Energy and Environment tweeted Thursday that Mayor Muriel Bowser has a “list of recyclables and compostables” banning plastic straws and stirrers. [Mayor Bowser‘s list of recyclables and compostables now requires the use of compostable and/or reusable straws and stirrers when selling food or beverages in the District. Enforcement begins January 1, 2019!…] (“DC Bans Churches From Handing Out Straws With Free Coffee,” Washington Free Beacon, by Elizabeth Harrington, November 17, 2018)

Now, if you are a cantankerous old guy like me, you might wonder what is a church doing handing out coffee in church in the first place–but, that’s probably just “back-number” thinking, as ol’ Dr. Vernon McGee used to say.

The next news item also touches upon a matter that ruffles my feathers. I’m referring to the climate-change mantra that gets more invasive by the hour–that is, it has evolved from the global-warming push by the globalists elite. These are the one-worlders who want to rob the U.S. Treasury–a thing that has within its mostly empty vaults IOUs, not true wealth these days.

Man-made global warming has been proven a hoax, and now man-made climate change is well on its way to being proven the same, according to some experts.

Researchers who were attempting to prove evidence of climate change recently published a study claiming that ocean temperatures were increasing at a dramatic rate, much higher than previous estimates.

The study was blindly accepted by believers in the climate change/global warming theory.

But the researchers have had to retract their bold claims after a mathematician studied their findings and immediately debunked it, spotting errors that called the legitimacy of the entire study into question. (“Mathematician Exposes Global Warming Study Inflating Temp Rise By 600%,” Rapture Ready News, by Neon Nettle, November 17, 2018)

The first news item referenced–about the plastic straws–is somewhat whimsical. But it gives hint of more serious things in society and culture. Concern over plastic straws that might affect the environment in deleterious ways should be analyzed in light of other concerns these same environmentalists hold.

I’m thinking particularly of their concern for what human beings are doing to the environment. The radical among them claim that people are polluting the planet. Humans are over-populating Mother Earth.

These, therefore, are among the strongest of supporters of women’s right to choose in the matter of whether to abort their babies. The thinking is, among the more adamant, that the fewer people on the planet, the better. So there are legitimate reasons for babies to be thus gotten rid of…more than 60 million of whom have indeed been removed since Roe v Wade in 1973. The straw of plastic that would otherwise go into your Coke, you see, is intrinsically of like non-value to the unwanted child that will never see the light of day.

But, the environmentalist –whether radical or less so–will put the egg of the spotted owl or a field mouse and its habitat on a list of protected species. This is what the Apostle Paul called “reprobate thinking” (Romans chapter 1).

This is a generation of reprobate thinking. That mindset has led to problems wrapped up in the second word in the title of this commentary: rebellious.

A third news item shows, I think, an example of reprobate thinking spawning rebellion in our nation.

A report in the Christian Postcontends that the number of witches (and Wiccans) has dramatically increased since the 1990s, to the degree that there may be at least 1.5 million witches in the United States, which is higher than the 1.4 million mainline Presbyterians.

“[The practice of witchcraft has grown significantly in recent decades; those who identify as witches has risen concurrently with the rise of the ‘witch aesthetic,’”reported the Christian Post in October, citing data from Quartz, a Trinity College study, and the Pew Research Center.

Between 1990 and 2008, the number of Wiccans in the United States grew from 8,000 to 340,000, according to three religious surveys conducted by Trinity College in Connecticut. In addition, the Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that 0.4% of the population — 1 to 1.5 million Americans — “identify as Wicca or Pagan.” (“Number of Witches in U.S. on the Rise, May Surpass 1.5 Million,” CSN News, by Michael W. Chapman, November 18, 2018)

You might remember the bizarre story of a Los Angeles writer saying she had joined with thousands of witches to put a “hex” on Donald Trump. Diana Wagman said on May 23, 2017, that she and others intended to join forces ” to cast a binding spell on President Donald Trump “under the waning crescent moon.” She said, “It was not meant to physically hurt him, only to keep him from succeeding at his tasks…. I found an orange candle in a box of multicolored ones we use for our Hanukkah menorah. I printed the required tarot card off the Internet and propped it up. I cut an unflattering photo of POTUS out of the newspaper, and I burned it while chanting the words of the spell…. I plan to complete the ritual again.”

Such might be humorous in some sense, but it is profoundly indicative of rebelliousness that has taken root in society and culture.

God proclaims such rebellion is ruinous to any people. His example people, the Jews, fell into such rebellion–and their rebelliousness led to a ruinous future that reached its most heinous manifestation with the Holocaust of Hitler’s day. Moses reported the following in warning the Jewish people about such rebellion:

When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do. (Deuteronomy 18:9-14)

With the abortion infanticide since the implementation of Roe v Wade, we have, in effect, condoned the passing of children through the fires, just as the pagans did. It is abomination, the Lord says. We have reached the point of reprobate thinking that has spawned rebellion against God. He is a God that does not change. He is the same today as when He had Moses warn these things those millennia ago.

6 Comments

Excellent article ! I do have to laugh at one thing, though. Noooo, we don’t take coffee into the sanctuary. We have some meet and greet time either in the Fellowship Hall or in the Narthex. The adults drink coffee and chat. The kids grab a donut…….and run wild as they catch up with their friends. That time is also used to meet newcomers !

If one looks through history, one finds that tyranny has many faces but operates on the same principles. As I see it, it begins during a turbulent time when people are disgruntled and looking for answers to their current problems. For example, Hitler capitalized on Germany’s severe economic woes after the first world war.

Next is to find someone to blame for all the trouble. Hitler found his ultimate scapegoats in the Jews,

Once these things are established, the next step is to convince people that they have to give up their individual freedoms from the common goal of making a new society where everyone can prosper except those previously determined to be the “enemies of the people.”

Naturally, an enforcement arm is needed to make sure everyone falls in with the party line and we see from Terry’s article how that was done in Nazi Germany.

I have no doubt at all the the last world leader will employ all of these methods on a level never seen before to consolidate power for himself across the entire planet.

Just as the German populace, for the most part, willingly gave away their freedom to Hitler, I think it is inevitable that it’ll happen again, but this time it’ll be on a global scale and the result will be more horrendous than anything humanity has ever seen before.

Just goes to show that we really never do learn anything from history.

Gee, somehow my comment to the last article showed up here. I’m a fairly old guy and sometimes the tech trips me up. Sorry about that!

I’ll try to get it right this time and be on-topic with this article.

I do agree that the “reprobate” mind is becoming the new normal in society today. I suppose you could look at it from the point of view that a crazy person has no idea that there are, well . . . . crazy! When we see all kinds of random and horrific acts of violence almost on a daily basis, it certainly looks like people are really getting insane. That it still makes the news, I suppose, shows that there is at least some measure of lucidity left, but I do wonder if the time is coming when such events will hardly make a blip on the news radar.

Next, let’s get into some controversy, and here is one of the few areas where my friend Terry and I disagree – however we do agree on how the issue is being used for a power-grab by the environmentalists and globalists – and that is the issue of climate change.

I do have some background in Earth Science and the evidence of increasing carbon dioxide levels (up to 400 parts per million) is truly an all-time historical high. That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas is also a scientific fact. One need only see that the planet Venus is hotter across its entire surface even though father from the sun than Mercury. This seems pretty strong evidence of the heat-trapping ability of CO2.

What I do think is open to question is how much human activity is responsible as compared to natural causes – volcanism being the primary natural source of CO2. With the clear increase of seismic activity over the past few decades, it is very possible that volcanic contributions have added to the increase.

That being said, I believe that fossil fuel combustion, though it may not be the prime contributor, is likely a large source of CO2 emissions. Let’s face it, we burn a LOT of oil keeping our high tech world running.

Now when it comes to how this is being exploited in attempts to thwart national sovereignty by imposing global regulations of fossil fuel use, I think Terry and I are on the exact same page.

One of the biggest unanswered questions I’ve had for decades is that if the environmental movement’s goal was to really save the planet and not use climate change as a vehicle to further its own ends, why has it not pushed to develop controlled fusion technology?

Briefly, this is matter of transforming hydrogen (readily available in water) into helium which provides an energy source seven times more efficient than our current (and potentially dangerous) fission nuclear systems in place now. It is this same process which has worked for the sun for 5 billion years already (sorry, I’m an Old Universe guy!).

That being said, the science of nuclear fusion has been well known for around a century and it seems to me that if the same kind of effort the U.S. applied in developing a way to travel to the moon in less than a decade was applied on an international basis decades ago toward fusion, we would already have a cheap, safe, sustainable, means of producing all the energy we need with zero carbon dioxide emissions and no spent nuclear fuel to worry about sequestering in some storage facility which would have to last a few thousand years or so.

Bottom line is that I find that fact that this technology has not been moved to the top of the Climate Change Solution List by the environmental crowd makes me very much question what their true agenda actually is.